Katrina, Cronulla Beach and France on Fire: An Anti-Colonial Critique of Empire in 2006

George Dei, Arlo Kempf

Abstract

With a focus on both the theoretical and practical implications of anti-colonial theory, this article discusses a number of conflicts that have brought the oppression of marginalized bodies to the forefront of mainstream media attention. The authors formulate an anti-colonial response to the human-made disasters in the Southern United States, France and Australia. While race is finally being taken up in the mainstream media with regard to these events, such coverage has largely involved strategic denials, powerful silences and re-invocations of dominant colonial and racial paradigms. The anti-colonial discursive framework looks to the voices of the oppressed and to the various forms of, and potentialities for, agency and resistance to guide its response to the social and discursive disasters discussed herein. Given the prominence of ‘post’ discourses in the academy, a resuscitation of the anti-colonial discourse is necessary in order to provoke action-oriented resistance-based responses to modern colonial practices.